“So he called the police? That seems a little excessive, even for Mr. Yarwood. And a senior officer.” She gave Kincaid an assessing look.
“Did he call here asking for her?”
“There were a couple of messages on the answerphone, yeah.”
“But you weren’t concerned about Chloe?”
“I’m not Chloe’s keeper. It wouldn’t be the first time she’s gone off for a day or two. She does her own thing.”
“Would you mind looking to see if any of her things are missing?”
“But I’m sure – well, okay, I suppose I can do that.” Tia Foster stood up with a look that said she thought he was wasting her time, and disappeared into the rear of the flat.
Leaning closer to Kincaid, Cullen said quietly, “Don’t you think we should-”
Kincaid raised his hand, mouthed, “Just give it a minute.”
Tia came back, shaking her head. “I can’t tell that she’s taken anything, but that doesn’t mean-” She must have seen something in their faces because she paused, looking alarmed for the first time. “What?” she asked. “What aren’t you telling me?”
“We have CCTV footage of Chloe Yarwood entering her dad’s warehouse about ten o’clock on the night before last,” Kincaid said, placing his coffee cup carefully on the table. “Two hours later a fire was reported in the building. The firefighters found the body of a woman who has yet to be identified.”
“Oh, my God.” Tia sank onto the sofa, graceless as a marionette whose strings had been cut. Beneath her even tan, Kincaid could see the color leach from her face. “And you – you think it’s Chloe? But… that’s just not… I know she’s a bit of an idiot sometimes – you know, reckless – but she couldn’t be dead.”
Kincaid had never known recklessness to be proof against death; in fact, it was much more likely to be the opposite. “How do you mean, reckless?”
“She’s just a kid. She likes to party, stay out late, that kind of thing. Look, I know Michael Yarwood doesn’t like me, that he thinks I’m some sort of bad influence on his daughter, but I never meant… I didn’t realize she’d be so eaten up with it…”
“Eaten up with what?” asked Cullen, apparently picking the last part of her statement to unravel first.
“I know people. I grew up in Chelsea. My family has money. I can’t help that any more than Michael Yarwood can help having been born into a family of bricklayers, or whatever they were. But Chloe, Chloe was so impressed with it all… the right people, the right parties, the right clubs… it really went to her head.
“At first I thought it was kind of cute, you know – made me feel a bit like the fairy godmother. I thought she’d get over it, that she’d see it for the crap it is, but she didn’t, and she was… out of control.
“I- I’d asked her to move out. If she was in that warehouse – if something happened to her because…”
“Why would Chloe have been there because you asked her to move out?” Kincaid asked, not sure he was seeing the connection. “You didn’t put her out on the street, I take it?”
“No, no. I told her I needed someone in the flat who could pay half the mortgage, that I was worried about my job and about continuing to meet my commitment. My parents made me a gift of the deposit on this place so that I could get onto the property ladder, but that was it. Chloe was supposed to be paying me rent, but she was always behind, and lately she hadn’t been paying me at all. At first, I didn’t mind so much, but…”
“I’d say you were bloody generous to put up with it as long as you did,” Cullen remarked stoutly. “But I still don’t see what that had to do with the warehouse.”
“It was the flats,” Tia explained. “Chloe got the idea she could talk her dad into letting her have one of the flats when they were finished. I don’t know why she thought that – he’d kicked her out of his own place because she wouldn’t stay in school or keep a job – he certainly wasn’t going to pay to set her up on her own. But she kept asking me to let her stay until the flats were ready. I thought she was just stalling for time. That’s why, when I got back and heard those messages from her dad, and she wasn’t here, I was a little… relieved.” Tia dropped her head into her hands and rocked back and forth. Her hair, drying now, fell across her face like wisps of barley. “I’ll never forgive myself if something’s happened to her,” she whispered.
“So Chloe wouldn’t have gone there needing a place to sleep,” Kincaid mused. “And why take the guy with her when she still had a room here, and plenty of privacy with you out of town?”
“What guy?” Tia’s eyes grew wide with trepidation.
Kincaid drew out the CCTV photo and handed it to her. “Do you recognize him?”
“Oh, God.” She shook her head, not as a negative but in apparent dismay. “It’s Nigel. Nigel Trevelyan.”
“You’re sure?”
“Absolutely. I’d recognize that wanker anywhere.”
“Would he have hurt Chloe?”
“No way. He’s a poseur. Goes round in motorcycle leathers and chains, with his earring and his bandana, when the closest he’s ever been to a Harley is a push-bike. And all the working-class thing is pure bollocks – his family lives in Ealing, overlooking the golf course. Nigel wouldn’t say boo to a fly.”
“Do you know how we can get in touch with him?”
“Not a clue. I mean, Chloe hangs out with him, but I wouldn’t be caught de – Oh, God, sorry, I didn’t mean that.” Tia’s eyes filled with tears and she gave a little hiccupping sob.
Cullen moved over to the sofa, as if his physical presence might comfort her. “Don’t worry about it,” he told her gently. “Everyone says things like that. It’s just a figure of speech.”
“We don’t know for certain that it is Chloe in the warehouse,” Kincaid reminded them. “We’ll need some samples for the lab. Hair would be best. If you could tell me-”
“Chloe’s things are on the right-hand side of the lav in the bathroom. I hadn’t even unpacked my stuff yet, just used what I needed for my shower straight out of my travel kit. That’s how I knew she hadn’t taken her things – her hairbrush is still there.”
Leaving Tia to Cullen’s ministrations, Kincaid excused himself and found the bathroom. The sink had been set into an oak dresser, leaving a generous amount of space on either side. The left-hand side was clear, the right covered with opened bottles, spilled cosmetics, and a purple plastic hairbrush, its bristles matted with brown hair. There was also a tooth glass, its rim smudged with traces of lipstick and saliva.
Kincaid bagged both items, then stood, gazing at the snapshot that had been stuck into the edge of the gilt-framed mirror. It was a casual shot of the two girls, arms round each other’s shoulders, laughing into the camera. Chloe was easily recognizable from the CCTV image, but the color and sharpness of the photo seemed to give her substance. And here her youth was obvious, as it had not been in the brief glimpse captured by the hidden camera.
Although Kincaid had empathized with Michael Yarwood’s shock and worry, his sympathy had been abstract. Now, for the first time, he made an emotional connection between the laughing, pretty girl in the snapshot and the burned thing in the warehouse. Chloe Yarwood had become real.
He stood for a moment with his eyes closed, resting his hands on the basin’s edge. Dear God, he hoped the body they’d found did not belong to this girl, not just for her father’s sake, but for her own.
11
The debilitated old house in the city, wrapped in its mantle of soot, and leaning heavily on the crutches that had partaken of its decay and worn out with it, never knew a healthy or a cheerful interval, let what would betide.